


Marianthi

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 12:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20546498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Pitch falls for a woman/girl who can see him and abducts her like Hades and Persephone."She fears that the world is ordinary, now that the Guardians have left her behind due to her age.  She believes in many very old stories. How could Pitch resist?





	Marianthi

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 8/13/2013.

Her fears and her beliefs are so closely intertwined they are like two types of fruit growing on the same tree. Pitch savors the taste of both. She believes in almost everything, tentatively, like someone recovering from a broken heart who can’t help looking for love. She fears that the mundane world, with its small and petty dramas, full of thousands upon thousands of people who will never travel more than fifty miles from their homes, is all there is.  
  
These thoughts are sweet and new in her, and they remind Pitch of wild mulberries, their flavor doubled by the serendipity of finding them in the first place.   
  
He muses on her dark hair and eyes, her brown skin browner in the sun he can barely stand, and weighs his imaginings against what he knows: her heartbroken belief means she is too old to be protected by the Guardians anymore. Too old. Old enough. She would accept almost anything that proved she was not alone in a dull and predictable world. She believes in very old stories. He could play a part she would recognize.  
  
When he steps out of the long shadow of a cypress tree, backlit by the setting sun, she sees him. As deliberately as any amateur actress, she drops the flowers she had been gathering. Her expression wavers between wonder and fear as he approaches, before he wraps her in his cloak and takes her to his lair.  
  
She gazes around at the vast, gloomy spaces, touches a black marble column with a smooth-skinned, squarish hand. “It’s magnificent,” she says softly.  
  
“I made it for you.”   
  
“What should I call you?” She is not looking at him, and his heart aches. “You are not who I thought you were. I don’t know how I know, but I do.”  
  
“You may call me Mavros. And I am nothing.”  
  
“But all this—” she gestures at the caverns.  
  
“Before I became nothing I was Fear. There was some power in that, but most of it is out of my control now.”  
  
“Is that why you brought me here? So I could fear you?”  
  
“Why would I give you a palace if that was what I wanted?” Pitch’s question echoes in the vast spaces.  
  
“It is not so hard to guess,” she says, looking down at her well-worn clothes. “To make me fear that I was wrong for fearing you.”  
  
“That is not what I want. I want—your name.”  
  
“It’s Marianthi. And what else do you want?”  
  
“Marianthi. I want to say your name and have you hear my voice. I want to move and have your eyes follow me. I want to touch your hand and feel the solid warmth of your skin. I want—” he feels her growing fear. “I want everything you might expect from the role I chose to play. But I am accustomed to not getting what I want.” He strides over to one of a pair of blocky stone chairs, and sits down.   
  
“But you will not let me leave.”  
  
“Of course not. I may place some limitations on myself, but I have never been expected to be good, and so I will not be.”  
  
She joins him in the opposite chair. “Promise me that you are not human. Promise me you are—as grand as the stories in the stars. Promise me that even if you are not good you will never be—ordinary.”  
  
“I promise,” he says, and when he looks up, she is looking directly into his eyes.  
  
“Come and sit at my feet, Mavros,” she says, and she is surprised by the pity she feels when she sees the quickness with which he obeys. He leans his long torso against her legs—he feels colder than she knows a person should, but he still breathes. He rests his head on her knees, glancing at her face out of the corner of his eyes.  
  
She is surprised when he does not speak, but she cannot know that he does not trust his voice to stay steady, not when he is leaning against her and not passing through her like smoke. He fancies he can even feel her pulse.  
  
When she moves her hands toward his head, he flinches, and she wonders just what happened to make him nothing. When she begins to run her fingers through his inky hair—so strangely soft—he sighs, and stops the sigh short. As his eyes begin to close in peaceful sleep, she wonders from whose perspective Persephone’s story is supposed to be told.   
  
“Tell me you believe in me,” he murmurs.  
  
“I believe in you,” she says. The soft sound he makes in his throat, then, lingers in her mind until well after he’s breathing deeply, his eclipse-like eyes closed.  
  


* * *

  
  
When he offers her black mulberries, she does not eat them all. She will not forfeit the sunlight and he understands. This is how the story must go. And how can he mind her partial refusal when the remaining fruit ends up crushed against her skin and his as they first use the vast bed?


End file.
